Fonts for your Facebook bio

On Instagram, people often decorate the name at the top of their profile. Facebook doesn’t allow that: your profile name has to be the one you use in everyday life, written plainly. That leaves the bio as the one line near the top of your profile where both the words and their look are up to you.

Two facts shape what goes in it. It holds 101 characters, and spaces, punctuation and emoji all count. And it’s always public, so friends, friends of friends and strangers who land on your profile all read the same line. Treat it like the sign on your front door rather than a note to your friends.

Here is “Nurse by day, baker by night” in the four styles shown first above. All four paste in; the difference is how easily people can read them.

Small caps can carry a whole bio. Bold and cursive work better on part of it, such as the job or the hobby, with the rest plain: 𝗡𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 by day, baker by night. If the sparkle frame leaves you short of room, keep only the outer stars: ✧ Nurse by day, baker by night ✧.

Below the bio, Facebook’s Intro can list where you work, where you studied, where you live and where you’re from, each on its own line with an icon. These come from separate fields, and each has its own audience setting, so you can show your workplace to friends only while the bio stays public.

That division suits styled text. Leave the facts to the Intro fields, in Facebook’s plain type, and use the bio for what those fields can’t say: what you love, what you make, what people know you for. A styled bio above plain details looks deliberate rather than cluttered.

Tip: Running a side business? Give its name in plain letters somewhere in the bio, even if the rest is styled. People who meet you on Facebook often look the business up later, and they’ll type ordinary letters when they do.

Screen readers handle styled characters unevenly. Some read each one by its long Unicode name, some spell out the letters and some skip them, so a bio written entirely in styled text can come out as noise or as silence. Software that copies or translates text has a similar problem: a styled word is a run of symbols, not the word it resembles.

• Style a word or a phrase, not the whole bio.
• Keep names people might look up, such as a band, a shop or a team, in plain letters.
• For decoration a screen reader can describe, use an emoji such as 🩺 or 🧁 instead of styling a word.

1. Type your bio in the box at the top of this page and copy the style you like.
2. In the Facebook app, open your profile, tap Edit profile, then Edit or Add next to Bio. On a computer, click Edit bio in the Intro box on your profile.
3. Paste the text, check that the whole line fits and save. If Facebook stops you before the end, cut decoration before you cut words.
4. Look at the result in the app and in a browser, since styled letters can look slightly different on each.